Week in Veneers -- Looking Presi-Dental

[TexasTowelie]

Note: This OP is not intended to bash Joe Biden, but to provide a historical perspective on the evolution of politicians to also include vanity.


The 2020 presidential race has opened with such an oversaturated field of candidates that sometimes distinguishing between them all is like pulling teeth. During the September 12 Democratic presidential debate, former Vice President and frontrunner Joe Biden struggled to answer a tough question on the NRA. With Biden failing to ‘reach across the aisle’ and find a congressional majority post-Sandy Hook, journalist David Muir expressed doubts over the grinning ex-VP’s competency. But Biden’s response—relatively coherent compared to the rest of his performance that night—was quickly overshadowed. Viewers everywhere were overwhelmed by the strange mouthal calisthenics that accompanied his words. Was it gum? Or were those winning pearly whites—just like the notoriously plagiarized 1987 Iowa State Fair speech that imploded his 1988 presidential run—flashy, but not of his own creation?

This probable denture mishap gave fodder to existing claims that the 76 year old may be too long in the tooth for the job he aspires to. Talk of his age, speculated senility, and failure to win a primary since 1973, not to mention the substance of his policies and voting record, play second fiddle as the New York Post, alongside others, shriek, “Joe Biden struggles to keep his teeth in his mouth,” placing the very gleamers that make him popular in jeopardy.

But American presidential history is no stranger to those who lie through their teeth. At its root are the ivory shiners (mythologized as wood) behind George Washington’s stony smile. Washington, insecure about the puffy appearance of his denture-laden jowl, posed most often with a stern frown. An existing complete set of his choppers—fashioned from a smorgasbord of human, animal, and ivory teeth—can be viewed at his estate in Virginia. Another such gem can be found at the National Museum of Dentistry in Baltimore, where his lower jaw denture dated to 1795 grins in perpetuity. Biden’s own smile, an icon of the Obama years, may find its home alongside Washington’s someday. Indeed, his embodiment of silver-haired manhood recalls the dignified aged appearance of our founding fathers. That said, Biden would certainly flash his canines with more confidence were he crossing the Delaware.

Today’s televised debates are now criticized for their value as entertainment, and not as an opportunity to bite into ‘the issues.’ Commentators often recall the original televised presidential debates between a visibly anxious Nixon and infamously handsome Kennedy in 1960, an election theorized to have been won on visual charisma alone. Since the advent of televised debates, America has not elected a balding president, although nearly every candidate has been male and of typical balding age. (A balding Gerald Ford won neither his VP nor Presidential position through national election.) Biden has ensured that his own hairline creeps forward with what the Independent can only assume are state-of-the-art hair plugs. Cory Booker, in unconventional style, naively awaits his own surge in popularity once he perfects the sheen on his hairless crown.

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(College Hill Independent) Rhode Island